The Riddle of Humanity

Schmidt Number: S-3245

On-line since: 29th July, 2002

We have been busy getting acquainted with the way man's life processes
and the sense-zones locate him in the cosmos, and we have tried to
look at some of the consequences that follow from the facts on which
this knowledge is based. Above all, we have to some extent cured
ourselves of the trivial notion, held by many who want to befriend the
spirit, that everything that can be referred to as
material or perceptible to the senses is to be
despised. For we have seen that here in the physical world it is
precisely the lower organs and functions that reflect higher
activities and relationships in the human being. In their present
state, we can only view the senses of touch and life as being very
dependent on the physical world  equally so the ego sense, the
sense of thought and the sense of speech. But we must accustom
ourselves to seeing those senses that in the Earth sphere only serve
the inner being of the organism as the shadowy reflections of
something that is immense and significant for the spiritual world once
we have passed through death: the sense of movement, the sense of
balance, the sense of smell, the sense of taste and, to a certain
degree, the sense of sight. We have emphasised the fact that in the
spiritual world the sense of movement enables us to move among the
beings of the various hierarchies in accordance with the way they
attract or repel us. After death we experience our connection with the
hierarchies as spiritual sympathy or antipathy. Physical balance, as
we know it here in our physical bodies, is not the only thing the
sense of balance provides for us; it also holds us in balance between
the beings and influences of the spiritual world. It is similar with
the other senses: taste, smell, sight. And, in so far as a hidden
spirituality plays into the physical world, it is of no use to turn to
the higher senses for clarification. Rather we must enter the realms
of the so-called lower senses. Mind you, these days it is not possible
to speak about many of the highly significant things that lie in this
direction. For today there are such strong prejudices that all one has
to do to be misunderstood and accused of all kinds of things is to
speak out about precisely those things that are interesting and
significant in a higher spiritual sense. So, for the time being, I
must forgo speaking about some of the interesting things that go on in
the realm of the senses.

In this respect, the situation was much more favourable in earlier
times. In those times, however, there were not the same possibilities
of disseminating information, either. Aristotle could discuss certain
truths much more unguardedly than they can be discussed today, when
such things are immediately taken personally and awaken personal
sympathies and antipathies. In Aristotle's works, for example, you can
find profound truths about the human being which one simply could not
explain to a large audience of today. I was referring to some of these
in the last lecture when I said that the Greeks did not fall prey to
materialism even though they knew more than we do of how our
soul-spiritual nature is related to our physical, bodily nature. In
Aristotle's writings, for example, you can find wonderful descriptions
of the external appearance of a brave person, or a coward, or an
indignant person, or of someone who is addicted to sleep. There, in a
manner that from a certain point of view is correct, you find
described what kind of hair and complexion and wrinkles cowardly
people have, what sort of bodies drowsy people have, and so on. To say
even this much would create problems these days; other things would be
even more problematic. People of today take these things much more
personally. In many respects they positively want to use the personal
to keep themselves in the fog about the truth. That is why some
circumstances today compel one to speak in more general terms if one
wants to speak truthfully.

Specific insights about every kind of human being and every human
activity await those who, in the right spirit, turn to our preceding
considerations with the necessary questions. We have said, for
example, that the human senses are presently located in more or less
separate, static regions. They are just like the constellations, each
of which remains motionless in its own region of the cosmos  in
contrast to the planets, which appear, circling, wandering, changing
their location in a relatively short time. Moreover, the boundaries of
each sense region are fixed, whereas the life processes pulse through
the whole organism and circulate through the individual sense-zones,
permeating them with their influence.

Now we also have said that our sense organs were more like vital
organs during Old Moon. There they functioned more as vital organs,
whereas the organs that are now vital organs were essentially more
related to the soul. Consider, then, something that has been
emphasised more than once: that sometimes people will regress to, or
return to, an atavistic state that was a natural and usual state in an
earlier time  in this case, during the Old Moon period. We have
noted that there is a form of regression that revives the dreamlike
imaginative vision of Old Moon. Today, such an atavistic regression
into the visionary state of Old Moon is a form of illness.

Now I ask you please not to lose sight of something: namely, that the
visions themselves are not pathological. If that were so, we would
have to say that everything mankind experienced on Old Moon was the
product of illness, for there one lived entirely in such visions. And
we would have to say that Old Moon was an illness that humanity had to
go through  an illness of soul, at that  so that the
humanity of Old Moon was necessarily insane. Naturally, one cannot say
this; it is utter nonsense. The pathological aspect does not lie in
the visions themselves, but rather in the fact that they cannot be
sustained by the human organisation in its present, earthly form. The
earthly, human organisation adapts to such visions in a way that is
not appropriate to them. Just consider: when someone has the kind of
vision one had on Old Moon, this vision is only adapted for
engendering the kind of feelings, activities and acts that were
appropriate to Old Moon. The illness consists in someone having such a
vision here on Earth and responding to it in ways that only an earthly
organisation can respond. This only happens because the earthly
organisation cannot tolerate this vision with which it is more or less
impregnated.

Take the most obvious, concrete kind of case: circumstances arise in
which someone has a vision. Then, instead of remaining in quiet
contemplation of the vision and relating it to the spiritual world,
which is the only world to which it can rightly be related, the person
applies it to the physical world and behaves accordingly. In other
words, he starts to go berserk because the vision is doing what it
should not do  permeating his body and bringing it into action.
This is the most obvious kind of case. Today, when an atavistic vision
arises that the body cannot tolerate, it does not remain in the domain
which has brought it to life, which is where it should remain. A
person becomes powerless if, his physical body is too weak to stand up
against the vision. If the physical body is strong enough to stand up
against it, the vision is weakened. Then the objects and events in it
cease to appear  falsely  as if they really belonged to
the world of the senses, for that is how they seem to someone who is
made ill by them. Thus, if the physical body is strong enough to
counter the falsifying tendencies of an atavistic vision, the
following occurs: in such cases, a person relates to the world in a
fashion that is similar to that of Old Moon, and yet he is strong
enough to reconcile this Moon mode of experience with the earthly
organism in its present state.

What does this imply? It implies that this person has somewhat altered
his inner zodiac with its twelve sense-zones. It is changed in such a
way that what happens in this zodiac of the twelve senses is more like
a life process than a sense process. Or, better expressed, one could
say that events in the regions of the senses, events which actually do
impinge on the sense processes, are transformed into life processes
 so that the sense processes are lifted out of their present,
dead state and transformed into something living: you still see, but
something lives in that seeing; you hear, but simultaneously there is
something living in that hearing. Something lives in the eyes or in
the ears which otherwise only lives in your stomach or on your tongue.
The sense processes are truly brought into movement. And it is quite
in order for that to happen. For then our modern sense organs acquire
qualities that could otherwise only be possessed in the same degree by
our vital organs. The forces of sympathy and antipathy flow strongly
through our vital organs. Now just consider how much of our whole life
depends on sympathy and antipathy  on which things we accept and
take up and which we reject! And now those very powers of sympathy and
antipathy, powers that are otherwise developed in the life organs,
once more begin to pour into the sense organs. The eye not only sees
red, it experiences sympathy or antipathy along with the colour. The
sense organs regain the capacity to receive and be permeated by the
life forces. So we can say: in this way the sense organs are brought
once more into the sphere of life.

For this to happen, there must be changes in the life processes.
Through these changes, the life processes become more ensouled than
they otherwise would be in earthly life. The ensouling takes place in
such a way that the three life processes  breathing, warming and
nourishing  are more or less united. Then they begin to manifest
themselves more in the sphere of the soul. With normal breathing, one
breathes the prosaic, earthly air; the normal process of warming
involves earthly warmth; and so on. But when they are ensouled, the
life processes are united by a kind of symbiosis. They cease to be
separated in the way they are usually separated in the present-day
human organism; they establish connections with each other. Breathing,
warming and nourishing unite to form an inner association with one
another. And this is not nourishing in the coarse, material sense, but
is rather the process of nourishing. The process occurs without it
being necessary for anything to be eaten, and it does not occur on its
own, as when we eat, but in conjunction with the other processes.

The four remaining life processes are united in a similar fashion.
Secretion, growth, maintenance and reproduction are united to form a
single, more ensouled process, a life process that has more to do with
the soul. And then these two parts can unite yet again-not just
gathering all the life processes together so that they function as
one, but by combining three of the processes in one group and the
other four processes in another so that these two groups, in turn, can
function in concert.

In this way three new soul faculties arise. In character they resemble
 but are not identical with  the earthly faculties of
thinking, feeling and willing: here is another triad of soul
faculties. The new faculties differ from thinking, feeling and willing
as they normally present themselves on Earth. They are more like life
processes, but not so differentiated as the life processes otherwise
are on Earth. When someone is able to sustain this sinking-back into
Moon without lapsing into visions, a very intimate, subtle process
takes place. The sense-zones are transformed into regions of life, the
life processes are ensouled, and there arises a kind of understanding
that is faintly suggestive of the Old Moon visions. Nor can a person
remain constantly in this state, for then one would cease to be fit
for life on Earth. To be fit for Earth one needs the kind of senses
and vital organs we have described previously. But in special
circumstances a person can enter into this other state. Then, if the
state tends more towards the will, it leads to aesthetic creation; if
the state tends more towards perception, it leads to aesthetic
enjoyment. Truly aesthetic human behaviour consists in the enlivening
of the sense organs and the ensouling of the life processes. This is
an extremely important truth about humanity; it explains much. This
enlivening of the sense organs and this new life in the regions of the
senses is to be found in the arts and the enjoyment of art. Something
similar occurs with the vital processes, which are more ensouled in
the enjoyment of art than they are in normal life. These days, it is
impossible to understand the full significance of the changes a person
undergoes when he enters the artistic sphere, because a materialistic
approach is incapable of grasping the facts in their full reality.
Today a human being is seen as concrete and fixed. But, within certain
limits, people actually are variable. This is demonstrated by the sort
of variability we have just been observing.

Elucidations such as those that have just been presented contain far,
far-reaching truths. To mention only one such truth: there is the fact
that precisely those senses that are most adapted to the physical
plane of existence are the senses that must undergo the most radical
changes when they are led halfway back into a quasi-Moon existence. In
order to serve someone who follows this road halfway back into the
time of Old Moon, the sense of the I , the sense of
thought and the sense of physical touch must be wholly transformed,
for these senses are robustly adapted to Earth existence.

It is of no use to art, for example, to confront the
I or the world of thoughts the way we normally do.
At the very most, you might find the usual relationship to the
I and to thought in some minor arts. No art
describes or portrays a person's I directly, in the way the person
actually lives, standing within the real world. The artist must go
through a process whereby the I is lifted out of
the specialisation it has acquired on earth; it must give him a
generalised sense of meaning, a sense for the typical. An artist does
this as a matter of course. Similarly, an artist cannot directly
express the world of thoughts in the way in which it is usually
expressed here on earth. Otherwise he would not be able to produce any
poetry or works of art at all, but at the very most only didactic
things, things that contain some lesson and are not artistic in the
true sense of the word. The changes that the artist makes in the world
that confronts him enliven the senses by leading them back to a
previous condition in the way I have been explaining.

But, regarding this change in the senses, there is something else that
must still be considered. I said that the life processes intermingle.
Just as the planets come into conjunction, and just as their mutual
relations are significant  in contrast to the immobile stars
 the sense-zones can also come into motion; once they have been
transposed to the planetary dimension of human life, they can come to
life and attain to relationships with one another. This is the reason
why artistic perception is never as restricted to specific sense-zones
in the way in which our usual perception is. The particular senses
also develop certain relationships with one another. Let us consider
an example  say, painting.

A consideration that is based on true spiritual science would discover
the following things. Sight, the sense of warmth, the sense of taste,
the sense of smell  these have their discrete zones as far as
normal sense observation goes. Their respective areas are separate. In
painting, however, these sense regions merge in a remarkable fashion,
not only in the concrete organs, but also in their spheres of
influence as I have described them in preceding lectures.

A painter, or someone who is enjoying a painting, does not merely see
the content as colours: the red or the blue or the violet. Instead, he
actually tastes the colours, although of course not with the actual
organ, or else he would have to lick the painting with his tongue,
which he does not do. But a subtle process that is similar to the
process of tasting nevertheless takes place in all those areas allied
to the sphere of the tongue. When you use the processes of sensory
perception to see a green parrot, your eyes see the green colour. But
when you enjoy a painting, other subtle, imaginative processes also
participate in the act of seeing. These processes are associated with
your tongue and belong to your tongue's sense of taste. They are
similar to the subtle processes that occur when you taste something,
when you eat your food. Now, the act of seeing simultaneously involves
other processes  not the processes that actually happen on the
tongue, but rather fine, physiological processes associated with these
 so that in the deeper sense of the word the painter really does
taste the colours.

And he smells the nuances of the colours  not with his nose but
rather with the more soul-allied things that accompany the act of
smelling from deeper in the organism. Therefore, the individual
sense-zones begin to merge as they become areas more given over to the
life process.

When we read a description intended for instructing us as to how
something looks or how something happened, we employ the sense of
speech, or the sense of word. Through it, we obtain information about
one thing and another. But if we listen to a poem in the same way as
we listen to straightforward information, we will not be able to
understand it. The poem does manifest itself to the sense of speech,
of course, but it cannot be understood solely through the sense of
speech. In addition to the sense of speech, the ensouled senses of
balance and movement must also be focused on the poem  not just
the usual senses of balance and movement, but the ensouled senses. So
we again see that the senses merge. The regions of the senses have
become life regions and the sense organs function in combination.
Furthermore, this whole process must be accompanied by life processes
that relate to the soul instead of functioning like the usual life
processes in the physical world.

Someone who engages the fourth life process so intensely that he
sweats when he listens to a piece of music has gone too far; that is
no longer appropriate to the aesthetic realm, for secretion has been
taken as far as physical secretion. The first point is that the
process should remain on the soul level and not lead to physical
secretion, even though physical secretion is based on exactly the same
process. The second point to note is that secretion should not emerge
as a discrete process, but rather in an association of four processes
 all of them on a soul level: secretion, growth, maintenance and
reproduction.

On the one hand, spiritual science has the task of linking the
development of Earth to the spiritual worlds. From many points of view
we have seen that mankind is headed for disaster unless this link is
established. On the other hand, however, spiritual science must also
revive the capacity for grasping and understanding the physical world
in terms of the spiritual. Not only has materialism led to an
inability to rise to the spirit, it also has led to an inability to
understand the physical. The spirit is alive in everything physical.
If it is lost sight of, it becomes impossible to understand the
physical. Just ask yourselves, what could someone who knows nothing of
spiritual realities know about the way an entire sense-zone can become
a life-zone, and about the way vital processes can manifest as soul
processes? What do contemporary physiologists know about these subtle
processes that occur in us? Materialism has gradually brought us to
such a pass that we have lost all contact with concrete reality. We
live only in abstractions, and now we are abandoning the abstractions,
too. At the beginning of the nineteenth century people still spoke of
vital energy, or of life energy. Naturally, one cannot do anything
with such an abstraction, for matters can only be grasped when one
enters into the concrete. Once you have a full grasp of the seven life
processes you are involved with the realities, and what matters is to
re-establish a connection with reality. People try to put new life
into all sorts of greyish abstractions, abstractions like elan
vital. Even though they may intend exactly the opposite, they are
only leading mankind deeper into the crudest materialism, materialism
that stoops to mysticism. These abstractions say nothing; they simply
testify to an inability to understand. The development of humanity in
the immediate future depends on a knowledge of things that can only be
discovered in the spiritual worlds. We must make real progress in our
spiritual understanding of the world.

In this regard, we ought to go back to the good Aristotle, who was
closer to the ancient vision than people are today. I only want to
remind you of one characteristic thing about old Aristotle. A whole
library has been written about the notion of catharsis, by which he
attempted to show what is at the root of tragedy. He said: Tragedy is
a unified presentation of events from human life, events which arouse
fear and pity as they unfold; furthermore, the soul is purified
because of the way this fear and pity unfold, and so the effects of
the fear and pity are also purified. The age of materialism has
written so much about this passage because it does not possess the
organ for apprehending Aristotle. The only ones on the right track
were those who saw that Aristotle's expression catharsis
is medical, or quasi-medical, and not so in the sense of today's
materialistic medicine. The aesthetic experience of tragedy really
does engender processes that reach right into the physical body and
are the organic events that normally accompany fear and pity. It does
this because vital processes are changed to processes of soul. A
tragedy purifies these vital effects because they are simultaneously
elevated to processes of soul. And if you read further in Aristotle's
Poetics you will find a hint of this deep understanding of the
aesthetic man  not understanding in the modern style, but out of
the ancient traditions of the Mysteries. You will find yourself much
more in the grips of immediate life reading Aristotle's Poetics
than you ever will by reading the tract of some modern aesthetician
who can only sniff around and dialecticize, but is unable to get hold
of realities.

Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man marks
another high point in the understanding of aesthetic man. He lived in
a more abstract time, however. Today we need to add the spiritual
 the spiritually concrete  to the idealism of that time.
But when we look at the more materialistic time of Goethe and
Schiller, we see that the abstractions of Schiller's letters on
aesthetics nevertheless contain something of what we have been talking
about. It is only that the process has descended nearer to the
physical plane  but only so that the material may be all the
more thoroughly penetrated by an intensively grasped spirituality.
What does Schiller say? He says: Humanity, as it lives on earth has
two basic drives: it has rational impulses and natural impulses. The
logic of the impulse to reason functions as a natural necessity. One
is forced to think in a certain way; thinking is not at all free. What
avails it to speak of freedom as regards this sphere of natural
necessity where one is forced to think that three times three is nine,
and not ten? Logic implies a strict rational necessity. For this
reason, Schiller says that the person who conforms to the necessities
of pure reason is subject to spiritual compulsion.

Schiller contrasts the necessity of reason with the necessities of the
world of the senses  of everything that lives in the drives and
emotions. There, also, a person must follow a natural necessity rather
than his own free impulses. Then Schiller looks for a middle condition
between the necessities of reason and the necessities of nature. He
finds it in what occurs when a person forms something aesthetically
 when rational necessity inclines towards what the person loves
or does not love, and when his thinking follows or avoids inner
impulses and pictures instead of being bound by rigid, logical
necessity. But this state also suspends natural necessity. For one
ceases to follow, as through compulsion, the necessities of the
natural senses. These necessities are ensouled and spiritualised. A
person ceases simply to want what the body wants; instead, sensual
pleasures are spiritualised. In this way, the necessity of reason and
the necessity of nature approach one another.

Naturally, you must read Schiller's letters on aesthetics for
yourselves; they are among the most significant philosophical
productions of world history. There, living in Schiller's analyses,
you will discover the very things you have just been hearing, only
there they are described in metaphysical abstractions. The way vital
forces are returned to the sense-zones is contained in what Schiller
calls the freeing of natural necessity from rigidity. And what
Schiller calls the spiritualisation of natural necessity  he
might more aptly have called it ensouling  contains
what we referred to as the functioning of the life processes as soul
processes. The life processes become more ensouled, the sense
processes come more to life  that is the true process that you
will find described in Schiller's letters on aesthetics. There it is
put more in abstract, rather ghostly concepts, because that was how it
had to be in that era. At that time thinking was not yet spiritually
strong enough, not strong enough to descend with the spirit into the
regions sought by the seer. In those regions there is no opposition
between matter and spirit; rather there is an experience of how the
spirit everywhere saturates matter so that there is no possibility of
ever bumping into spiritless matter. Contemplation that is merely
mental is merely mental only because the person is not able to make
his thoughts as strong and as spiritual  as concretely spiritual
 that the thoughts can cope with matter. In other words, he is
not able to penetrate to what is truly material. Schiller is not yet
able to see that the vital processes can function as soul processes.
He is not yet able to go as far as to be able to see how the processes
that work physically as nourishing, warming and breathing can be
formed into something that ceases to be material and instead lives and
bubbles in the soul. When this happens, the material particles are
scattered by the force of the concepts with which one grasps the
physical process. And Schiller is equally unable to look up to the
realm of the logical in such a way that he ceases to experience it as
merely conceptual. He is not able to come to that stage of
development, which can be reached through initiation, whereby the
spiritual processes are experienced in their own right and whereby a
living spirituality enters into what would otherwise be mere knowing.
Thus the attitude that lives in Schiller's aesthetic letters is that
I do not quite trust myself to directly approach concrete
experience. Nevertheless, that which one grasps more exactly
when one tries to approach the realm of life through the spirit, and
the realm of material through the living, is already stirring in these
letters.

Thus we can see all areas of life struggling to move towards the goals
of spiritual science. At the transition from the eighteenth to the
nineteenth century there arose a philosophy which expressed a longing
for greater concreteness. This philosophy had a more or less
conceptual form, however, and the longing could not be satisfied. And,
because its initial vitality ebbed, this longing for greater
concreteness gradually degenerated into the coarse materialism that
has lasted from the second half of the nineteenth century into our own
time. But something else must also be understood: For spiritualism to
establish links only with the spirit is not enough; the material world
must be conquered  we must learn to recognise the spirit in
matter. That happens through such knowledge as we have been
discussing. It leads one to discover new connections, such as the
unique place of aesthetic man in Earth evolution. To a certain extent,
aesthetic man lifts himself above the stream of development and enters
a different world. And that is important. The aesthetically inclined
person and the person who works in an aesthetic field do not act in a
way that is entirely appropriate to someone on earth, but rather their
sphere of activity is in a certain way lifted out of the Earth sphere.
With this discovery, aesthetics leads us to some profound secrets of
human existence.

On the one hand, anyone who expresses such things as these is touching
on the highest truths; on the other hand, what he says can sound
virtually nonsensical  mad and distorted. But we will never
understand life as long as we timidly hold ourselves back from the
real truths. Take any work of art that you wish  the Sistine
Madonna or the Venus of Milo: if it really is a work of
art, it is not entirely of this earth. It has been lifted out of the
stream of earthly events. That is self-evident. And what lives in a
Sistine Madonna or a Venus of Milo? That which lives in
them also lives in the human being. It is a power that is not entirely
adapted to Earth. If everything in humanity were adapted to the earth,
mankind would not be able to live on any other level. But not
everything in the human being is adapted to the earth and, for occult
vision, not everything in humanity is attuned to being earthly man.
There are mysterious forces that some day will provide mankind with
the impetus to lift itself out of the sphere of earth existence. Nor
will we ever understand art as such until we see that its task is to
point beyond the merely earthly and beyond what is solely adapted to
the earth  to point to the sphere where that which lives in the
Venus de Milo truly does exist.

The more you cast your gaze towards the humanity of the future and
towards the spiritual challenges of the future, the more you must take
certain facts into account, certain facts that are necessary to any
truthful picture of the world. Today we still are living with many
versions of the assumption that anyone who states something logical
and who logically substantiates what he says is necessarily saying
something significant about life. But being logical  logicism
 is not enough on its own. And because people are always so
satisfied when they can produce something logical, they maintain the
truth of all imaginable kinds of world view and philosophical system.
And of course, all of these can be supported logically: no one who is
acquainted with logic would question that they are supportable by
logic. But mere logical demonstration does nothing for life. What is
thought, what is held in the light of consciousness, needs to be more
than just logical, it needs to measure up to reality. What is merely
logical is not necessarily valid; only what measures up to reality is
valid. I will use just one example to show you what I mean. Suppose
you are describing a tree trunk that is lying here before you. You can
describe it quite systematically and demonstrate to someone that
something really is there because you are describing it just as it is.
All the same, your description is a lie. For what you describe does
not exist in its own right and cannot possible be a tree trunk in the
state in which it is now lying there, cut off from it roots and
branches and twigs. It is only a part of existence when seen along
with its branches, blossoms and roots, and it is nonsense to think of
the trunk as existing in its own right. It is not a reality when it is
only seen as it is, lying there. It must be seen with all its shoots
and with everything in it that enables it to come into being. One must
become convinced that the trunk lying before one is a lie because the
truth is before one only when the whole tree is there. Logic does not
require us to see a tree trunk as a lie, but it accords with reality
that we see it so and that we only accept the whole tree as the
reality. A crystal is a truth. In a certain respect it exists in its
own right, although only in a certain respect, mind you, for all is
relative here, too. A crystal is a reality, but a rosebud is a lie if
it is seen only as a rosebud.

So you see how all manner of things occur today because the concept of
being in accordance with reality is lacking. Crystallography and, at a
pinch, mineralogy are still sciences that accord with reality. But
when you get to geology, it no longer accords with reality, for it is
an abstraction in the way the tree trunk is an abstraction. It is an
abstraction, not a reality, even though it is lying there before you.
Things contained in the earth's crust came into being along with what
grows out of the earth's crust and thus cannot be conceived without
it. We need philosophers who are not satisfied to limit themselves to
their powers of abstraction, thinking up new abstractions. More, and
increasingly more, there must arise a thinking that accords with
reality and is not merely logical. Thinking alters the whole course of
world evolution. For what is a Venus de Milo or a Sistine
Madonna from the standpoint of thinking that accords with reality?
If you take them just as they are before you, you are not in contact
with reality. You must be enraptured. To see a work of art truly, you
must be lifted out of the earth's sphere and removed from it. To
really encounter the Venus de Milo, your soul must be different
from the soul that responds to earthly things; precisely the things
that do not exist on this earthly plane are what transport the soul to
the plane where they really do exist  to the realm of the
elemental world, which is where what is in the Venus de Milo
really exists. One is able to stand before the Venus de Milo in
a way that accords with reality precisely because she possesses the
power to tear us away from mere sense-bound vision.

I have not the slightest desire to promote teleology in the negative
sense of the word. Nor shall I say anything about the uses of art, for
that would be adding pedantry and philistinism to teleology. I shall
say nothing about the uses of art. But we can well speak of the
sources of art and how art comes to be a part of our lives. We do not
have time to cover the whole subject today, so I will just make a
start with a few preparatory words. A counter-question leads us to
part of the answer: What would happen if there were no art in the
world? If that were so, all the forces that are now devoted to art and
the enjoyment of art would be used to produce a life that runs counter
to reality. If you were to remove art from the development of
humanity, then human development would contain just as many lies as it
now contains works of art! Here art displays that unique and dangerous
relationship that arises when one nears the threshold of the spiritual
world. Just listen yonder, where things always have two sides! If a
person has a sense for being in accord with reality, then an aesthetic
attitude gives him access to higher realities. An aesthetic attitude
leads someone who lacks the sense for being in accord with reality
directly into a world of lies. There is always a dividing of the ways
and it is very important to be aware of this fork in the road. This
does not just apply to occultism; it already applies when you come to
the realm of art. To bring about a way of seeing the world that
accords with its reality is an aim of spiritual science. Materialism
has given us a way of seeing things that goes directly against
reality.

As contradictory as this all seems, it is only contradictory for those
who judge the world according to their preconceptions, rather than in
accordance with what is really there. We really do live in a phase of
development in which the direct influence of materialism is putting
more and more distance between us and the ability to comprehend what
even a normal object of the senses is  an ordinary thing of the
physical world. There have been some very interesting experiments that
shed light on this problem.
(see Note 13)
They conform exactly to a
materialistic way of thinking but, like so many things produced by
materialistic thought, they support the development of precisely those
abilities that mankind needs for developing a spiritual world-view.
The following experiment has been carried out  I am taking just
one example from among the many such experiments. A whole event was
planned ahead of time: A person is to give a lecture in the course of
which he says something injurious and upsetting about someone present
in the audience. All of it is planned. The lecture is given word for
word as planned beforehand. The person against whom the insult is
directed is supposed to jump up and a real scuffle is to develop
 this is how events are supposed to develop. During the course
of the argument, the man who has jumped up is to reach into his pocket
and draw out a revolver. Other details of the incident are planned out
exactly. In other words, you must imagine the unfolding of a fully
programmed, detailed scene. Thirty people were in the invited audience
 not just any people, but advanced students of law, and lawyers
who had already completed their studies. After the scuffle is over,
each of the thirty was asked to describe what happened. Others who
were privy to what was going on were there to ensure that protocol was
followed and that the whole event went exactly according to plan. So
each of the thirty is questioned. Each has seen the event. None of
them is thick-headed. They are all educated people, the very ones who
later will go out into life and investigate what really has occurred
in the case of such a fracas or of other incidents. Yet of these
thirty, twenty-six falsely described what they saw and only four could
produce an acceptably accurate account  only four tolerably
accurate accounts! Such experiments have been going on for years in
order to demonstrate how the truthfulness of witnesses should be
weighed in a court of law. Every one of the twenty-six sat there and
could say, I saw it with my own two eyes.  One
forgets to consider what is required in order to be able to correctly
describe something that has occurred before one's very eyes!

We need to consider the art of maintaining a true perspective on what
happens before our very eyes. Someone who is not conscientious towards
events in the world of the senses will never be able to develop the
feeling of responsibility and the conscientiousness necessary for
viewing spiritual facts. Just look at this world of ours that is
presently so under the influence of materialism and ask yourselves how
many are aware that it is possible for twenty-six people out of the
thirty who have witnessed an event to be unable to describe it without
committing falsehoods, with only four who are able to give even
tolerably accurate accounts. In view of something like this, you can
begin to feel what immeasurable significance the results of a
spiritual world-view have for ordinary life.

Now you might ask yourself whether things were different in earlier
times. Our current mode of thought has not always been current. The
Greeks did not yet possess the abstract manner of thinking that we
have, and need to have, in order to get about the world in a way
appropriate for today. But the manner of thinking is not the important
thing; the truth is what matters. In his own way, Aristotle tried to
use more concrete concepts to describe the inner aesthetic mood and
the aesthetic attitude. But the aesthetic constitution was understood
in an even more concrete, imaginatively clairvoyant fashion by the
early Greeks, who were still connected with the Mysteries and who
experienced pictures instead of concepts. In those times, one looked
back to the age of Uranus, who embodied everything that we can take in
through our heads and through the powers that now are manifest in the
outer world through the sense-zones. Uranus  the twelve senses
 is wounded. Drops of his blood fall, foaming, into the ocean
called Maya. Here you see the senses beginning to come to life and
sending something down into the ocean of the life processes, and there
below you see how the blood of the senses pulses through the life
processes which begin to foam up and become processes of soul. And the
ancient Greeks' understanding of this led them to see how Aphrodite
(see Note 14)
 Aphrogenea, the goddess of beauty  is created out of
the foam that arises when the blood of the wounded Uranus drips into
the ocean of Maya. This, the more ancient of the myths about the
creation of Aphrodite, expresses the condition of the aesthetic man
and is one of the most significant imaginations and one of the most
significant thoughts in the whole of mankind's spiritual evolution.
But still another thought needs to be placed beside the thought of
this ancient myth which shows Aphrodite being born from the drops of
blood of the wounded Uranus that fall into the sea  rather than
as the child of Zeus and Dione. We need a further imagination 
one that penetrates even more deeply into reality and goes beyond the
realities of the elemental world into the physical realities. We need
an imagination from a later age  one that approaches the
physical-sensory world. Alongside the myth that shows how Aphrodite,
beauty, was born into the world of mankind, we need to place the great
truth about how original goodness entered into humanity. We need to
show how the spirit descended into Maya-Maria, just as the drops of
Uranus' blood trickled into the ocean whose name also was Maya 
and how, out of the beautiful foam that arises [*The German for foam
 Schaum  has many suggestive echoes. For example,
there is the word schauen, show or
spectacle, and also Schema, which means
perceptible manifestation, semblance, or appearance, and
which refers to a concept that is central to Schiller's account of
aesthetic man. (Tr. note.)], the herald who announces the approaching
dawn of a new age is born. The sunrise that announces the eternal
regency of the Good ... of understanding of the Good, The
True-and-the-Good, the spirit. This is the truth Schiller intended
when he wrote the words:

Only through beauty's dawn-lit gate
Can you pass into the realms of knowledge.
(see Note 15)

The knowledge he refers to is primarily moral knowledge.

You can see how the tasks of spiritual science are growing  not
mere theoretical ones, but real life tasks. In our day it is no wonder
that the misunderstandings about spiritual science multiply among
those who are not devoted to the truth. We have to accept that as an
inevitable side-effect.

Many people have been caught in the grip of a most peculiar attitude
towards the truth, especially in our materialistic age. And if I had
to tell you about the letters I receive, then today I would have to
make yet another addition to that part of our collection where the
enemies of the truth are exhibited. I do not even like to mention the
latest incredible nonsense, which came in a letter I received
yesterday. Yes, my dear friends, this is something we must feel; just
reflecting a little on it is not enough. For although our time demands
it, bringing spiritual science to mankind in a form that is
appropriate to our time is not such a simple task. One must speak out
in spite of thereby being exposed to the dangers involved in telling
numbers of people  and it truly is more than a few  about
truths that not only touch upon what is highest and most holy, but
that also go most deeply, affecting heart and soul. Think of the times
when there were not a few sitting in the auditorium who later became
thorough-going enemies and falsified what was being said! Those who,
at any rate, still take the Society seriously, must go through this
experience of speaking to many people who, like yourselves, are
supposedly friends, while knowing that in the past there have been
some who turned out to be enemies  people who later falsified
the truths they heard and used what they received here to attack the
truth. One must always reckon  sometimes while watching it
happen  on the possibility that the person who is listening to
what is being said may turn against us in the way others have turned
in the past. Today this must colour our work in the realm of spiritual
science: knowledge of the human soul takes on special significance.

Such things are not to be taken too lightly. Let us try to refresh our
memory for a moment, our memory of truth's path as it has appeared in
cosmic development, in the evolution of humanity, and remind ourselves
of how much was involved in the progress of truth! I will not say any
more about it today. But we have touched on an area that is closely
related to the direct connections between this life and the spiritual
world. Only by understanding it can we shed lights on such things. One
must take such opportunities as this to touch on what today's
representatives of the truth must undergo. And I hope that there are
at least a few of you who know why every now and then I have something
bitter to say about the way people relate to the truth, and that there
are some who know that it is not quite truthful to say that I am the
guilty one. Perhaps I might characterise our contemporaries'
much-loved illogicality with an anecdote that would seem silly in
other circumstances. But this false logic is used, not in the service
of the truth, but in the service of lies.

Once there was a man who took another man's estate away from him.
After he had taken it, the former owner did not possess it as before,
but instead had to begin all over again to work for what he already
had earned once. A trial was conducted. The former possessor of the
estate was there and also the man who had taken it away. Each had his
own advocate. Now, advocates are not always there to present the
unconditional, absolute truth, but rather to say what is useful to the
person they represent. In this case, the advocate who was lodging the
complaint was the first to speak, the one representing the man from
whom something had been taken. And, indeed, to begin with he seemed on
the way to convincing the court. But then the advocate of the man who
had taken the estate away took the floor and said to the judge,
Your Honour, you have heard that my client confesses to having
done everything that he has done. You have asked my client, Do
you plead guilty, or not guilty? To that my client answered,
I took all those things, but I do not feel that I am
guilty. And my client is entirely correct in saying this. He
will concede that he took all those things; but he need not feel
guilty about it. Nor can Your Honour find him guilty, for in order to
establish the guilt one must go back to the original cause of the
matter. Just consider, Your Honour, this man has become a thief. But
he never would have become a thief if the other man had not possessed
these things he took away from him! The original owner is the one who
has trespassed! If he had never had the possessions, my client could
never have become a thief! So he is truly the guilty one! It was only
when my client saw that this man had these possessions that he was
tempted to become a thief. And this advocate spoke so eloquently
that the court finally declared, Yes, until today we have always
believed that the thief is the guilty one. But all those who have
believed that the person who takes something is guilty have been
mistaken, for when one examines the real, original cause, one sees
that the person from whom the things were taken, the original
possessor, is the guilty one.

Everyone will see that what I am telling you is utter nonsense. But
this is exactly the sort of logic that is used today against spiritual
science. Spiritual science makes its way into the world and
accomplishes certain things. Then these things are distorted by people
who say they only do so because they see the truth in spiritual
science. They are using the same logic as someone who says that the
person from whom something is taken is the guilty one because he has
tempted the other to take it from him. Such is the logic abroad today
and, if you will only take care to observe the life around you, you
will see instances of this kind of logic.

Yesterday I was blamed  among other things  for everything
that happens in the world when someone or other lies about spiritual
science and commits certain acts. This is the same logic as that
followed by one who says: The real guilt does not lie with the
person who takes, but with the person from whom something is taken,
for he is the one who created the original cause of the theft.